Article: On the origins of genre.(science fiction)

There is no starting point for science fiction. There is no one novel that marks the beginning of the genre. We have all had a go at identifying the urtext, the source from which Heinlein and Ellison and Gibson and Ballard and Priest and Le Guin and a host of others flow. Brian Aldiss famously named Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and his suggestion has been taken up by a number of later commentators. Other strong contenders include H.G. Wells, or Edgar Allen Poe, or Jules Verne. Gary Westfahl has nominated Hugo Gernsback as the true father of science fiction. Still others (including myself) have gone back to Thomas More's Utopia.

We are all wrong.

We have to be wrong, ...






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